Takeunder

It's a takeover. Only, instead of the acquiror paying a premium above and beyond the current stock price, the buyer pays less than whatever the stock is trading at.

Yes, it's a highly unusual situation, but sometimes the public just doesn't reallize how bad the business outlook is for a given company. So they sell at a price below where they're trading. In the modern era, this phenom happened with LinkedIn. The company had been trading at astronomical highs with the public believing it was "the next Facebook." In fact, FB was killing a lot of its growth. So MSFT swooped in with a price far below where the stock had been trading just 6 months earlier, with a kind of "takeunder," as LinkedIn management realized that their future was bleak. Under the auspices of Microsoft, however, LinkedIn had a chance of remaining vital to the businessworld...a place it stands today.

So that takeunder was probably the least-bad situation. Had LinkedIn not taken the bid from MSFT, it's likely it would have all but evaporated as a stand-alone company today.